Georgiev less than ordinary in Colorado cage
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2024 (533 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The chant began midway through the third period, shortly after the Winnipeg Jets scored their seventh goal of the night on just their 22nd shot.
“Pull your goalie,” the frenzied, sold-out crowd at Canada Life Centre began. “Pull your goalie.”
It was both clever and cutting, highlighting in a rather cheeky way what was obvious to anyone watching the game: The Avalanche appear to have a very big problem in net.
Alexandar Georgiev might have led the NHL in wins (38) during the regular season, but that only underlines how much of a team statistic that can be. Dig a little deeper and his goals-against average (3.00) and save percentage (.897) raise plenty of alarm bells for a team with legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations.
The Jets exploited that potential weakness early and often, lighting up the undrafted 28-year-old while their own netminder, Vezina Trophy favourite Connor Hellebuyck, stood on his head at times.
“It probably needed to be better, right?” admitted Avalanche coach Jared Bednar, when asked about his team’s goaltending.
“Like, I thought we played well, we created some chances. He made some good saves, but we’re gonna need like a couple more saves than that, probably, to win, you know. But it is what it is. We’ll regroup. We made some mistakes in front of him that we’ll have to clean up and try to get the job done. It’s a team game.”
Fair enough. But when Georgiev’s own team scores a half-dozen in enemy territory against arguably the world’s No. 1 netminder, anything short of a victory has to be viewed as a massive letdown.
On this night, anyways, there was no Plan B, which is why Bednar didn’t heed the crowd’s helpful advice.
With promising rookie netminder Justus Annunen (2.25 GAA, .928 SV% in 14 games) not even dressed due to illness, the backup was former Manitoba Moose netminder Arvid Holm, who hasn’t played a single NHL game in his life and had middling results in 16 minor-league games this year.
And so Georgiev was left to the wolves, while the opposing fans howled in delight. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t very talkative with media after the game, offering up this answer when asked what exactly happened out there.
“We lost Game 1,” he offered.
Hmmm. Any idea why? Did he feel like he could have been better?
“I’ll watch the video to check it out and analyze,” he said. “They scored some really good goals, a couple lucky ones. You have to stay positive and try to find out what happened and move forward. It’s only 1-0 in the series, so I’m looking forward to the next game.”
Question is, will he be in the crease for it, or might Annunen be healthy enough to get the start?
“I’m not going to speculate,” said Bednar, who preferred to focus on what he felt were some positives from his group.
“We played extremely hard. We did a lot of good things. You don’t get six (goals) on the Jets without doing that. We also made some mistakes that they capitalized on. Too many, obviously, and it ends up costing us the hockey game,” he said.
“We’ll have to be better in a couple areas of the game, but I don’t think there’s a need for frustration at all after that. Shouldn’t be frustrated at all. I think we played hard, we played well in a lot of areas. We have to clean up a couple things but, hey, this is gonna be the long, hard series and frustration shouldn’t be creeping into it after losing one game on the road.”
The Jets have now lit Georgiev up twice in the last eight days. They beat him four times on 15 shots in the first 15:17 of their regular-season game on April 13 as the Jets went on to win 7-0. (Annunen allowed three goals on 11 shots in mop-up duty).
So, file a potential Colorado goalie controversy just one game into the playoffs as a very good development for Winnipeg.
mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca
@mikemcintyrewpg

Mike McIntyre is a sports reporter whose primary role is covering the Winnipeg Jets. After graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College in 1995, he spent two years gaining experience at the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 1997, where he served on the crime and justice beat until 2016. Read more about Mike.
Every piece of reporting Mike produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
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